April 4, 2012 5:02 AM PDT
Ok, let me take off my helmet and put on my propeller cap and go techie...
Pixels are little colored dots dots that make up an image. Mega Pixels are how many total pixels there are in the image. Example if your camera is 12 mega pixels the image is normally 4000 pixels wide by 3000 pixels high (4000x3000=12,000,000 or 12 mega pixels).
Mega Bytes (MB) is the size of the file created when the image is stored. The size of the file is varies depending on how large the image is (mega pixels) and how much detail and colors there are in the picture. A 12 mega pixel picture of a white wall will be a very small file, where as a 12 mega pixel picture with lots of colors will be a larger file.
Picture Size is the actual width and height of the picture in pixels.
Since our system re-sizes all pictures when uploaded, the picture size can effect the process. Even if an image file is within the 5mb upload limit, if the picture size is too large the system is running out of the resources (memory) required to re-size it to the proper size for either the forum or photo albums.
With cameras taking larger and larger photos these days, I am looking into increasing the resources available for image re-sizing so that we can handle any image within the specified file size.
In the meantime the best thing to do is re-size the photos before uploading to 3 mega pixels or less (2000 x 1500 pixels).
As a couple people mentioned above there are a number of free programs out there - Paint that comes with all Windows Versions; and Picasa which is a free download from google (just search "picasa")
Which ever you use it is very easy to re-size your images. Just open the image in the editor, click Re-Size and set the width or height (which ever is larger) to 2000 pixels (the other dimension will set automatically) and save the image.
April 4, 2012 6:12 AM PDT
Don't go too far down on size. I hate pictures I have to get my glasses on to see.
You can not only reduce the size, but the quality. A larger picture at a lesser quality (DPI) is generally not a big deal on a forum.
April 4, 2012 6:48 AM PDT
Ok, let me take off my helmet and put on my propeller cap .....
.......e pixels (the other dimension will set automatically) and save the image.
Yeah...Wot 'E Said up there...lol...
April 4, 2012 6:53 AM PDT
All pictures uploaded here are re-sized to 640 pixels wide (max) so be sure to upload pictures 640 pixels and above (up to 2000) to get the maximum size.
And yes, DPI is not a big deal when uploading - pictures on the web are displayed at 72 dpi
April 5, 2012 12:11 PM PDT
Oh sweet holy mother of devine jaaaasus, Boof bareing his bollox to all and sundry, don't think I can handle that...my imagination don't stretch that far, never mind my eyesight ! pick up a free image resizer on the net Boof, there's shitloads of them out there